I'm trying to think of all the positive things that are happening in my life. Sometimes I lose track of those things that I should be grateful for so I want to list them here:

My wife.
There are no perfect people in this world, but when push comes to shove I feel that she has m back.

My children.
It's a kind of pride and warm feeling to see them grow from little meatballs into little girls. I'm not looking forward to have them leave one day.

My job.
It's been able to support our house hold at a standard of living that's becoming harder and harder to maintain in this economy.

The economic rock on which we stand

Speaking of economy, I've been thinking about how even though we are in a recession, there seems to be more and more ads on things. Once again, I'm not a communist, but it seems crazy that our society has no problems having all these messages about buying things when most Americans are having problems balancing thier budgets.

Caeer builder recently had a survey stating that 42 percent of their respondents were living paycheck to paycheck. I think it is more of a personal thing rather than the amount of money that people make. From a very young age we are taught to keep up with "the Jones'" and the other thing that we are taught about money is the single semester of econ1 in high school. Personally, I think that it's a little late because by then all your classmates have already been bombarded by barbie, GI Joe and Disney and I doubt many of them have an idea of what it is costing to live like they live.

My econ teacher was pretty well off. Her husband made a lot of money and this was her way of giving back to society. There were many rumors about her drinking in her car between classes. ↩

Well, it seems that I’ve allowed myself to get caught up in the drama again, but I feel like a much better person. I vaguely remember someone once saying that its how we deal with events that define us. I had some very interesting things happen to me since the last time I did a review.

First and foremost, I got sick again. This time it was really bad and I couldn’t leave the bathroom for more than an hour or two before my stomach emptied itself. I don’t think I’ve been sick like that in years and I’m seriously considering talking to my doctor about why I’ve been getting sick so often. My wife says that it might be all the stress of working, a general level of dissatisfaction with where I am in my life, the relationship between me and my family, the list is long. But I definitely could be worse.

Secondly, pack up the kids, we are moving! We are moving to a two story townhouse that has almost twice the amount of space of our current place. We’re put the deposit down and we’re just waiting for the credit checks and then we’ll be set for the end of the month to move in.

Third, I looked at the number of posts that I did in January(12) and compared it with the number of posts that I did back in 2009 (36) and 2008 (24). Wow, that’s a lot of information to put on “Da Google.”

Forth, I came across a journal that I used to keep up a couple years ago and -honestly- I could write a post about it alone. It was sad that I looked at it and saw that I am still dealing with issues from back then. To sum it up, it’s been more reason to do more in order to move my life forward.

Well, I don't want to say that the honeymoon phase is over, but I will say that things have become a lot more... hectic.

I guess the first day had a lot going for it since I only saw them for 4 hours before it was time for them to go to bed and we were lucky to be able to take them all to the park followed by the library where they can run off a lot of energy.

Yesterday, was different. Thankfully, my mom took the older girls out to the museum and to go eat and when they got back they had cookies and cake. I -in my infinite wisdom- then told my wife that she should go out and take a break from all the kids and although it took a lot of convincing she (although she did take our youngest which I was grateful for later).

After that, things weren't as bad as you would think, but it wasn't perfect either. I was running around breaking up little fights over toys and turns. The kids screaming "NO! It's my turn" and running to the other side of the room because someone is doing something they shouldn't: Spilling things, taking things, eating things, thankfully not breaking things, but I'm sure something has disappeared into that magical land that missing socks go. I even attempted to go over letters with very poor results. I could tell that the oldest one was frustrated, but I hope that I'll be able to get her to recognize most of the alphabet before she leaves.

Eventually, the girls settled and I managed to get them all into bed without the same hassle as the night before. Although, I did have one call me a dozen times for various things until I put my foot down.

One thing of note was although our guest don't seem to get along during the day, the oldest one does show some concern for her sister. I feel sad for them because with all the drama that they've gone through the only one's they truly have is each other. To wrap it up, this time I got to sleep in the bed and had to share it with my oldest.

Yesterday, after a particularly long series of events. My wife and I have had the opportunity to care for two (2) more girls; one aged 3 and the other aged 1. I won’t go into the details of where we got them or how we got them, but they are here and it’s nice to see how they interact with our girls. Even so, my mind is racing with questions of what would happen if the girls stayed with us. How are we going to do lessons? How are we going to transport them? How are we going to do bed time and showers? Easy, you just take it one day at a time.

Things that I noticed so far:

When little girls get together it seems to always be play time
My wife and I did our best to accommodate. We had to take both cars in order to get them to the park yesterday and it then use the baby bjorns to hold the little ones as we ran around chasing the more mobile of the two. It would have been more fun if we could have done it earlier in the day.
Baths aren’t that hard Bath time was done doing two by two and it wasn’t that difficult, because I’ve found that kids (or at least the ones I’ve seen) like water. If anything it was difficult making them wait their turns and making sure they don’t drown each other.
Dinner Well, it’s a good thing my wife and I have moved away from eating fast food and the like and actively plan and prepare meals in advance. It saves money (2 adults and 4 kids… yikes!) and time (just heat and eat).

Discipline This was an awkward subject for me to handle. On one hand, I’m a parent who is raising his daughters in a way I feel is right. On the other, these aren’t my children and I don’t know what they are expecting. I don’t spank, but I expect that what I say should be followed. So far, we haven’t had any big issues other than the older one pushing her sister down and a misunderstanding on what it means to share. Strangely enough, it’s my own daughter who's been giving us the most trouble. It could be because she’s two now and wants to express herself with the word “No” or she’s embolden now that we have company.

Either way, I got my eye on her….

Bed Time
This is actually, where things get a little more tricky. Thankfully, these girls sleep through the night, but it just begs the question of where do they sleep. We pretty much put the oldest one in my daughter’s crib, her sister has her own portable crib and our girls slept with mommy in the bed. Leaving me on the couch and I have to say it’s probably the best night of sleep that I’ve had in days.
Well, that sums up the first day. The second one is today, and thankfully I’m at work for most of it!

Recently, I noticed something new in the email notifications that I get from facebook. They have allowed you to reply to a conversation without having to log into the website! This is awesome because you can follow along with a conversation without leaving your "productive" environment.

This week, I’ve been really ill. Maybe it’s all the stress that I’ve been under: Looking for a new place to live, Asking for a raise, unresolved issues with my family, weird sleeping schedule (the kids), pressure to produce something!

Anyway, here’s a quick review:

Accomplishments:

Asked for a raise (Which was quickly followed by questions of “How do you do that special XYZ thing you do?)

Keep my head when I found out my account information was used to make some weird purchases

Today, I got a notification that someone had stolen my account information to buy things online and that my account is going to be closed for the time being. It just goes to show that you have to be on top of this kind of stuff and people will take your money even if you don’t have a lot in the first place.

On top of that, I just got the bill for the fixes to my doorway that was kicked in last year.